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Have you ever wondered why some critics review films? They don't even seem to like movies that much from what they write. I LOVE movies, and think about them long after the last credits roll across the screen. My reviews are meant to inform, entertain and never have a spoiler.

Enjoy my reviews and please comment and come back frequently! Thanks for visiting!

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Arrival

I was looking forward to seeing the film Arrival. It was promoted as an
intellectual sort of film about aliens, with little in the way of explosions
and death, and more on the level of cerebral discourse.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I came away wondering if
something was lost in the adaptation. The screenplay was based on a short story
by Ted Chiang, Story of Your Life. Sometimes
it is hard to translate the written word into a visual representation onscreen,
and I suspected this might have been a problem of translation, in terms of the
written word onto the screen.

One screen adaptation I really enjoyed was The Shawshank Redemption. The screenplay
was based on a short story by Stephen King called Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. I read the story after
having seen the film and the screenwriter did an exemplary job translating it
to a full-length film. This film was not up to that standard. I am going to read
Story of Your Life, and determine for
myself how this film could have been better.

Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is selected to travel to a site in
Montana where a spaceship has landed in order to hopefully communicate with the
aliens. The pod shaped spaceship is just one of twelve that has mysteriously
descended upon the earth. She is a linguist, and to me her willingness to face
the aliens is never fully explored. What has made her such a daring young woman
to go there with no support from anyone she knows?

Also in attendance is a physicist, Ian Donnelly (Jeremy
Renner), reporting along with Louise to Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker). If
someone doesn’t figure out why the aliens have come to earth, war against them will
commence.

What I did like was the depiction of the communication by
the aliens. They were shooting out what looked like ink from their octopus
looking appendages, kind of in a Rorschach inkblot way, and it was Louise’s job
as a linguist to interpret or crack their language in order to see what these
pod aliens wanted.

I thought that Louise and Ian’s relationship was not fully
explored as the days progressed, and I think that was a mistake. It would have
added more to the film and helped fill in the blanks. The film has to do with
time, how modern society is aware of time passing in a linear fashion, whereas
quantum physics postulate that time exists all at once, perhaps inter
dimensionally?

The film is rated PG-13 for brief strong language. It was
nominated for eight Academy Awards including Best Picture and Director, Adapted
Screenplay, Cinematography, Production Design, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, and
Film Editing. It won only Best Achievement in Sound Editing, not that it is a
small award, just that it was the only one of eight they were nominated for
that won. I’d recommend you watch the other nominated films first and leave
this one for last, for when you have the time.